9/30/2013

  My legs are covered in bruises, and I can barely move my body.  I'm positive people think I was kicked in the leg due to the giant bruise on my right knee.  However, I was not beaten, and I did not fall down a hill.  I actually started to learn my solo yesterday.  My solo is to the song "Bottom of the River" by Delta Rae.  Words cannot describe how much I love this song and how great the dance makes me feel(even though my stamina is not up to par, and I'm breathing like a dog only a minute in).  At the beginning of the session with my teacher, he went into detail about the song and about its meaning.  It seemed like he had sat down and analyzed it just like any piece of literature we would analyze in class.  He wanted to look at the song from every possible angle so that we could portray the story that the song illustrated.  After a lengthy discussion we decided to focus on the idea that a woman is possessed and believes that God is going to come for her baby.  In order to save her baby, she goes to the river to baptize him, but in reality she drowns the baby.  I am going to analyze a portion of the song to see if that section goes along with the main story my teacher and I came up with.  Here is the portion of the song:

If you get sleep or if you get none
The cock's gonna call in the morning, baby
Check the cupboard for your daddy's gun
Red sun rises like an early warning
The Lords gonna come for your first born son
His hairs on fire and his heart is burning
Go to the river where the water runs
Wash him deep where the tides are turning

   One word that describes this passage is "warning."  The first two lines of the passage say that no matter how much sleep the woman gets the rooster is going to wake her up early in the morning.  No matter what, the rooster is going to call to bid her to her duties.  I had a little trouble interpreting the next line, "Check the cupboard for your daddy's gun."  I asked myself, "Why would she need a gun if she is planning on baptizing her son?"  I believe that the voice that is telling her to "baptize" her baby is telling her to grab a gun for protection.  If anything goes wrong, then the woman has the gun.  The line could also take an even darker turn if there could be a possibility that the woman will wake up from her dreamlike state and realize what she has done to her baby then she would need the gun to use it on herself. (And I did not think this song could get any darker!)  The word "warning" comes into play with the next line.  The red sun is rising early in the morning as a warning to the woman.  She needs to hurry and baptize her son before the Lord takes him away.  The line, "His hairs on fire and his heart is burning," connects to the idea of damnation.  The baby is damned if the mother does not baptize him in the river.  The words "fire" and "burning" remind me of hell.  The baby will go to hell if the woman does not save him.  The woman must go to the river and wash him DEEP.  She does not need to put the baby in the water and then take him out.  She must push him deep into the river.  If she does not push him deep into the river, then the baby cannot be saved.  The woman is possessed to believe that she is doing the right thing in trying to save her son when in reality she is killing him.
  I absolutely love this song, and I am ecstatic that I get to interpret this song not only in the way of analyzing literature, but in movement with my body.  I can analyze the song and create movements that portray the deeper meaning of the song.  This is why I love to dance, and love to express myself through dance.  It allows me to analyze a song with movement and with expression, and allows me to portray is with my body not just with words.